LAWRENCE, Kan. — By the yardstick that matters most, the 2015 Kansas football season was a disaster: The Jayhawks lost all 12 of their games. Look deeper, and the numbers are worse. Eight of the losses were by at least 25 points. Home attendance dipped by 20 percent, to an average of 27,282. Crowds that size make up barely half the capacity at Memorial Stadium.

It was the Jayhawks’ first winless football season since 1954, and it extended the program’s losing streak to 15 games. But David Beaty, the relentlessly optimistic 45-year-old coach who took on the job in December 2014, detected glints of promise. He said he had even learned a few things.

“The thing I learned the most was the incredible ability of the human mind to focus,” said Beaty, a native of Garland, Tex., who had two brief tenures as an assistant coach at Kansas (in 2008-9 and 2011) before getting the top job.

So when Beaty held the first team meeting before the 2016 season, he delivered much the same message he had a year earlier: Focus on the next snap, the next task, the next repetition. Every bit of success, he said again, would have to be earned.

But most people do not expect much more success. A preseason poll projected the Jayhawks to finish in 10th place — last — in the Big 12 Conference. Among several other news media rankings of the 128 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, Kansas was no higher than 97th.

This is not new. At Kansas, there are plenty of fans and alumni who believe football is something merely to be weathered until basketball season. Beaty even summoned Bill Self, the men’s basketball coach, to give his team a pep talk this summer.

“We don’t really focus on what kind of a team people think this is,” said Jeremiah Booker, a sophomore wide receiver. “We focus on ourselves, trying to improve ourselves.”

For a program that has lost 20 of its last 21 games, there is nowhere to go but up. Last season, for example, there were so many freshmen on the roster that practices sometimes bogged down because players did not know where to go next.

But Kansas picked up experience with hard knocks. Booker is now one of 19 returning sophomore lettermen. As a result, practices are crisper, more energetic and competitive, Beaty said. It helped that the Jayhawks opened the season Saturday at home against Rhode Island, a Football Championship Subdivision team that finished 1-10 last season.

Last week, Beaty was still trying to settle on a starting quarterback, but three candidates — Cozart, Deondre Ford and Ryan Willis — all saw time last year. Beaty would like to redshirt a fourth choice, the promising freshman Tyriek Starks, but also said he would play him if he needed to.

“We really have to have a guy — whoever it is in there — control that team and learn how to manage that team,” Beaty said. “The leadership aspect is going to be huge for us. We’ve put a lot of work into body language, facial expressions, trying to get guys to move to the next play — not just managing the sideline, but everything else that goes on.”

From 2012 to 2014, Beaty was the wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at Texas A&M, which featured quarterback Johnny Manziel. Beaty said Manziel was one of the best quarterbacks he had seen at remaining unruffled, even after a bad play.

Kansas fans have seen a lot of bad plays since 2008, when Mark Mangino led Kansas to its last winning season. Mangino resigned a year later amid reports of mistreatment of players. Turner Gill’s teams won five games in two years, and Charlie Weis, the former Notre Dame coach, won only six before he was fired in September 2014, four games into his third season.

Beaty’s optimism sold his new bosses on believing that a turnaround was possible, “but you don’t just flip on a switch and turn it around,” he said.

D’Andre Banks, a senior offensive lineman, called the 2015 season a learning experience.

“Life is not always going to go the way you want, so you can either learn from it, or you can just sulk,” he said. “I feel like we learned from last year and became a better team.”

The Jayhawks threw scares into a couple of Big 12 opponents last year, losing to Texas Tech at home, 30-20, and to No. 13 Texas Christian on the road, 23-17.

But neither Beaty nor his players were willing to predict how many games the Jayhawks could win this season. At least four conference opponents — Oklahoma, Texas Christian, Oklahoma State and Baylor — will begin the season in the Top 25.

Beaty has persuaded the Jayhawks to approach the schedule as 12 one-game seasons. Prepare only for the next game, and only by focusing on the next drill, or the next play. And then move on.

“With losing teams, you’d lose five or six games straight, and you’ll have players going against coaches and coaches going against players — you’d have a dysfunctional team,” Fish Smithson, a senior safety, said after a recent practice. “But the dysfunction never happened.”

Smithson said Beaty “definitely got us through.”

“After a loss,” he added, “it was kind of hard to keep coming to the team meeting room and watch the film of a game you lost. But he always knew how to change our minds and make sure we focus on the next week, rather than the previous loss.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SP10 of the New York edition with the headline: After 0-12 Season, Kansas Starts With Romp and Hopes for Best. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe